rpietila Altcoin Observer

[drawingthesun]

digitalindustry, are you talking about Quark replacing Bitcoin? I'd say that would be hard as Bitcoin's network effect is massive and will be very long lasting. I'd wager that Bitcoin will gain side trees/chains and gain many abilities long before Quark replaces it.

If instead you advise Quark to replace Monero, I'd say how that makes no sense. Monero exists for anonymous transactions and Quark does not.

Also the Monero community is in heavy discussion right now about the ideal coin emission once all 18 million coins have been mined. We are looking into never going below 0.333 MRO per block or something like a 1% or 0.5% inflation rate.

not at all - its not about  "replacing" but i will give you a hint - the world is neither rational or mathematical and its not going to do what you "think" it will do - at best we are monkeys that stand upright at present we use 18th century policies primarily -

so in summary, what you think is the "best" is different from what the world my perceive as so - but the trick is looking a little bit a head an seeing where the "consensus" is going , to this degree the large declines in MSM concern me as well as their ability to "shape reality" - the problem with the hard fixed design is that inequity has to be sold just like the old days, if i look a little bit ahead , i can't see how it happens in a market of universal competition.

so we have a problem don't we.

of course you can say Bitcoin has the first leader advantage we all know this, but look at that graph again, the "smart money" are on this forum a lot of the time , and the institutional investors are going to learn from them its  peer environment ,but don't forget investors aren't chumps - they aren't going to do what you "think" they should do, they are going to do what makes them the most money .

and in this way simplicity and honesty works - as crazy as that sounds , i look a little ahead and i see that policy being useful.

as for MRO - can't comment have not looked at it enough - if its flawed i will find it - see the advantage of honesty is i can find flaws but i can post a challenge for others and they have to ignore me.

I'm confused about Quark. I must be missing something. I read the Quark thread first page, I watched the video on the homepage.

So all the coins have been mined and now there is a 0.5% inflation. Quark offers no gen 2 technologies.

I must be missing something.

Also I can see a future with different coins being stable next to each other, I can see Monero in that future, obviously Bitcoin is at the top of that future and I also see Ethereum in that future. But I am unsure about Quark.

For such a great coin why did they release 99% of their coin in 6 months? It'll 140 years to double that supply.

Why would people want to get involved in that coin? With Ethereum, Bitcoin and Monero, a miner can come along in 5 years and still mine a massive amount of coin. With Quark this isn't possible.

[AlexGR]

It's a weird game, but the rules are different for alts than btc. They have to make an impression and make it stick - fast.

Do I have to tell why I have never invested in an alt before? 

If all they have been good for is p&d and you see immediately from the parameters that even in theory thay have no lasting power regardless of the success of the pump...

Some do (have lasting power) and can also be used for hedging BTC or for mid/long-term investment to multiply one's BTCs... the vast majority don't have lasting power because they have nothing new to offer. So not all alts are p&d but even if they have something to offer they can still be treated as p&d.

[digitalindustry]

digitalindustry, are you talking about Quark replacing Bitcoin? I'd say that would be hard as Bitcoin's network effect is massive and will be very long lasting. I'd wager that Bitcoin will gain side trees/chains and gain many abilities long before Quark replaces it.

If instead you advise Quark to replace Monero, I'd say how that makes no sense. Monero exists for anonymous transactions and Quark does not.

Also the Monero community is in heavy discussion right now about the ideal coin emission once all 18 million coins have been mined. We are looking into never going below 0.333 MRO per block or something like a 1% or 0.5% inflation rate.

not at all - its not about  "replacing" but i will give you a hint - the world is neither rational or mathematical and its not going to do what you "think" it will do - at best we are monkeys that stand upright at present we use 18th century policies primarily -

so in summary, what you think is the "best" is different from what the world my perceive as so - but the trick is looking a little bit a head an seeing where the "consensus" is going , to this degree the large declines in MSM concern me as well as their ability to "shape reality" - the problem with the hard fixed design is that inequity has to be sold just like the old days, if i look a little bit ahead , i can't see how it happens in a market of universal competition.

so we have a problem don't we.

of course you can say Bitcoin has the first leader advantage we all know this, but look at that graph again, the "smart money" are on this forum a lot of the time , and the institutional investors are going to learn from them its  peer environment ,but don't forget investors aren't chumps - they aren't going to do what you "think" they should do, they are going to do what makes them the most money .

and in this way simplicity and honesty works - as crazy as that sounds , i look a little ahead and i see that policy being useful.

as for MRO - can't comment have not looked at it enough - if its flawed i will find it - see the advantage of honesty is i can find flaws but i can post a challenge for others and they have to ignore me.

I'm confused about Quark. I must be missing something. I read the Quark thread first page, I watched the video on the homepage.

So all the coins have been mined and now there is a 0.5% inflation. Quark offers no gen 2 technologies.

I must be missing something.

Also I can see a future with different coins being stable next to each other, I can see Monero in that future, obviously Bitcoin is at the top of that future and I also see Ethereum in that future. But I am unsure about Quark.

For such a great coin why did they release 99% of their coin in 6 months? It'll 140 years to double that supply.

Why would people want to get involved in that coin? With Ethereum, Bitcoin and Monero, a miner can come along in 5 years and still mine a massive amount of coin. With Quark this isn't possible.

hmmm - ok let me show you simplicity, i don't want to state you are uneducated or anything i just want to show you some points:

and let me explain, maybe you should re read what i said -  i'm not here to "sell" the currency Quark to you, i don't care i'm here to educate institutional investors that might read this at a later date -  i can copy it and repost if i have to -

you do what you think is best but let me just fill you in on a few pieces of common knowledge :


- investors and miners are not in correlation, and the investors decides, you can mine to your hearts content but without new energy flowing to the currency you have "sugar cubes."  or i like to say plastic beads.

- the mined distributed reward mean the currency supply is not able to be manipulated by miners , so in essence Quark took the miner manipulation out of the equation, what's that do when education enters the market?

well who will like that? miners or investors ?

its pretty simple isn't it ?

an investor that has to try to second guess what monopoly is on what piece of mining hardware, spin it how you like , but investors don't like uncertainty, how do they know your not going to dump the monopoly you have on them at any time in the future -  this is impossible with Quark.

next >

- the EQ reward means that this design can't be monopolized in the future, this is another attractive thing for an investor because if you are in long term if you have monopoly that leads to a dead currency.  ( i don't have time to explain this but if you really want to know i will point you in the right economic  direction)

- the multiple hash meant that in the time it was mined and went to zero there was no possibility of and ASIC or monopoly that's a part of history now.  

- this means only buyers own it and only sellers can sell .


V

everything else that has either a mining monopoly or an IPO - i'm sure that some people might invest in these things , but i find it so far out of comprehension at this stage i can't comment on it - hey i might be wrong you might be right, lets see in the future  : )


** i will exclude MRO from this at this time as i don't know enough about it .  
*** also everything else is basically a gimmick, spin it how you like , but when fiat money is peso worthless i want simple not gimmicks. Plus Quark can add any feature that any other monopoly fake crypto can also in the future.  -

[rpietila]

- this means only buyers own it and only sellers can sell .

Unfortunately for you, me and the likes of me think of it as 100% premine and would never even consider buying it.

[drawingthesun]

hmmm - ok let me show you simplicity, i don't want to state you are uneducated or anything i just want to show you some points:

Most of that was unnecessary.

and let me explain, maybe you should re read what i said -  i'm not here to "sell" the currency Quark to you, i don't care i'm here to educate institutional investors that might read this at a later date -  i can copy it and repost if i have to -

I really don't think institutional investors are going to buy into a coin that has no future due to premine. They would make lots of profits only if people decided to get on board. But the only people on board are the people apart of the premine, no reasonable person would mine or buy into this coin.

Also you have no incentive to get miners on board so you're susceptible to 51% attacks. Good luck with that.

you do what you think is best but let me just fill you in on a few pieces of common knowledge :


- investors and miners are not in correlation, and the investors decides, you can mine to your hearts content but without new energy flowing to the currency you have "sugar cubes."  or i like to say plastic beads.

Depends on the investor. Why would someone invest into a coin that has no future and just a bunch of greedy preminers?

- the mined distributed reward mean the currency supply is not able to be manipulated by miners , so in essence Quark took the miner manipulation out of the equation, what's that do when education enters the market?

You're forgetting that you need the miners to stop a 51% attack and just gave away all of that incentive to the preminers.

well who will like that? miners or investors ?

To be honest, the Quark system is not attractive to any outsider.

its pretty simple isn't it ?

Yeah, it is.

an investor that has to try to second guess what monopoly is on what piece of mining hardware, spin it how you like , but investors don't like uncertainty, how do they know your not going to dump the monopoly you have on them at any time in the future -  this is impossible with Quark.

Investors don't like uncertainty. I am sure they are asking questions like:

"Why should I invest into a premine?"

"With the focus now on generation 2 alternative currencies, some that are anonymous, some that have turing complete contracts, why should I invest in a Bitcoin clone with huge premine and no 51% security?"

next >

- the EQ reward means that this design can't be monopolized in the future, this is another attractive thing for an investor because if you are in long term if you have monopoly that leads to a dead currency.  ( i don't have time to explain this but if you really want to know i will point you in the right economic  direction)

Except if Monero grows huge and remains CPU only, it would take about 0.01% of that hashpower to attack and destroy all confidence in Quark for good.

- the multiple hash meant that in the time it was mined and went to zero there was no possibility of and ASIC or monopoly that's a part of history now.  

Nothing is certain. People that say "no possibility" are generally misinformed.

- this means only buyers own it and only sellers can sell .

It's more likely only sellers will sell it. Not sure who will buy it, probably someone who doesn't know a lot duped by your sales pitch.

V

everything else that has either a mining monopoly or an IPO - i'm sure that some people might invest in these things , but i find it so far out of comprehension at this stage i can't comment on it - hey i might be wrong you might be right, lets see in the future  : )


** i will exclude MRO from this at this time as i don't know enough about it .  
*** also everything else is basically a gimmick, spin it how you like , but when fiat money is peso worthless i want simple not gimmicks. Plus Quark can add any feature that any other monopoly fake crypto can also in the future.  -

Please add the following:

- Turing complete contracts.
- Ring signatures.
- instant confirmations.
- Side chains and side trees.
- Ability to run homomorphic encrypted applications on top of nodes that are organised and controlled by a turing complete blockchain (probably appear in Ethereum version 2)

[rpietila]

How come did you spend so many words to debunk him? 

[drawingthesun]

How come did you spend so many words to debunk him?  

It was easier than doing my assignment.

Path of least resistance.

Stupid thing is due in 2 hours.

[digitalindustry]

- this means only buyers own it and only sellers can sell .

Unfortunately for you, me and the likes of me think of it as 100% premine and would never even consider buying it.

then you are not an "investor" by definition - you are a person with investments in crypto that have proxy interests in mining and have invested in interests that related to either

#1 mining monopoly or
#2 directly in mining hardware.

don't take that the wrong way - its just a fact, but that segment of society (us miners) is relatively small, tiny in fact.

that's why Crypto is a relatively tiny market -

an investor doesn't even have the concept of a "premine" because it serves no purpose to them , but if i can sit back a tell them that a mining monopoly can dump a furious amount of capital on them they will probably want to know about that > as time moves forward (as it seemingly does in this dimension) > Quark has NOT that problem , and most or all other DO have that problem.

simple ?

[digitalindustry]

Please add the following:

- Turing complete contracts.
- Ring signatures.
- instant confirmations.
- Side chains and side trees.
- Ability to run homomorphic encrypted applications on top of nodes that are organised and controlled by a turing complete blockchain (probably appear in Ethereum version 2)

ha ha ok lets leave it at that - there was much talk about "premine" : D  lets add "premine" to Quarks list and i will take your list to 1000 investors, but i'll explain underneath the incomprehension listed above, is a monopoly of mining hardware or an shady IPO and those people control the currency units and the price , lets see who wants what in the future?

sound fair?

we probably don't have to add anything else?

: D

[rpietila]

: D

You are drunk.

24 hours ban from posting to the thread.

[bitcoinwonders010]

i value  your opinion very much. could you give us your opinion on XC

[Cryddit]

For what it's worth, I've been looking at the question of mining (and premines, etc) a bit differently.

In my estimation, the block subsidies and transaction fees are what the investors (or holders) pay the miners to keep the blockchain secure.  If these payments get too low relative to the value secured, then the blockchain becomes insecure and you get 51% attacks etc.

In that light the "standard" model we've been pursuing of block subsidies halving as the value secured grows larger seems dangerous.  As the value we're trying to secure grows larger, we intend to pay less for security.  We shall, in that event, GET less security. I've been watching alt chains with faster halving periods dying like flies, and I can tell you for sure that this is something that's real.

That brings us to transaction fees.  We are paying to secure value, and we are not paying transaction fees relative to value.  We are paying transaction fees relative to space.  Space - which is to say hard drive sectors and network bandwidth - is not what secures our value; what secures our value is a monetary hardware investment in ASICs and powerplants.  Which we need in proportion to the value we're trying to secure.  And which we will not get in proportion to the value we're trying to secure by paying for space instead.

My conclusion is that if we want to keep the network at zero inflation and pay for security out of  transaction fees, we should be paying transaction fees relative to the value of each transaction.  And if we want to keep the network going without transaction fees that cost a percentage of the transaction, we should accept an inflationary model where each year the block rewards are, eg, 5% larger than they were the previous year.  So, in the long run that approaches 5% inflation. 

Both of these options are not popular with the current crop of BTC holders.

[rpietila]

i value  your opinion very much. could you give us your opinion on XC

I don't know much about it except what is there in the website.

Its fully mined market cap is $25M, compared to Monero's $45M and DRK's $220M.

It has been in a pump.

It is all up the the devs and community at this point. I believe DRK will fail and hope that MRO succeeds, but can't say of this one.

[koryu]

i appreciate your thread, i am trading the ltc/btc pair once a while and wonder how you think about it.

imo ltc is a bit undervalued at the moment. additionally ltc's difficulty just hit a new ath. i am bullish on ltc and expect a pump.

[nakaone]

i value  your opinion very much. could you give us your opinion on XC

I don't know much about it except what is there in the website.

Its fully mined market cap is $25M, compared to Monero's $45M and DRK's $220M.

It has been in a pump.

It is all up the the devs and community at this point. I believe DRK will fail and hope that MRO succeeds, but can't say of this one.

this is probably really a no-one-knows-thing. I think ring signature is superior to coin-mixing, dark has a imo small first mover advantages, both have excellent developers. monero has for me a non-optimal emission curve.

one thing that differs altcoins from bitcoin is its changeability. if one thing is not perfect or it is better done in another way, good altcoin developers change it. this makes the decision above not more easy  

[drawingthesun]

For what it's worth, I've been looking at the question of mining (and premines, etc) a bit differently.

In my estimation, the block subsidies and transaction fees are what the investors (or holders) pay the miners to keep the blockchain secure.  If these payments get too low relative to the value secured, then the blockchain becomes insecure and you get 51% attacks etc.

In that light the "standard" model we've been pursuing of block subsidies halving as the value secured grows larger seems dangerous.  As the value we're trying to secure grows larger, we intend to pay less for security.  We shall, in that event, GET less security. I've been watching alt chains with faster halving periods dying like flies, and I can tell you for sure that this is something that's real.

That brings us to transaction fees.  We are paying to secure value, and we are not paying transaction fees relative to value.  We are paying transaction fees relative to space.  Space - which is to say hard drive sectors and network bandwidth - is not what secures our value; what secures our value is a monetary hardware investment in ASICs and powerplants.  Which we need in proportion to the value we're trying to secure.  And which we will not get in proportion to the value we're trying to secure by paying for space instead.

My conclusion is that if we want to keep the network at zero inflation and pay for security out of  transaction fees, we should be paying transaction fees relative to the value of each transaction.  And if we want to keep the network going without transaction fees that cost a percentage of the transaction, we should accept an inflationary model where each year the block rewards are, eg, 5% larger than they were the previous year.  So, in the long run that approaches 5% inflation. 

Both of these options are not popular with the current crop of BTC holders.

With regards to something new like MRO, a 1% inflation may be enough plus the standard tx fee to keep the network secure, if the coin is actually at the point where it needs this "eternal emission" then it's likely doing very well already and the coins would be holding value well.

With Bitcoin I have an idea of one possibility.

If side chains/trees ever happen, many bitcoins could "peg" off into a faster "bloat/prune" chain.

This chain would have very fast blocks and be suited to millions of transactions per day. The chain would ultra prune old transactions via an "evaporation" system.

For example all coins that don't move for 6 months start to evaporate at a rate of 1% per year. Also dust in a single address evaporates completely after 6 months. The evaporation goes to the miners (plus the fee)

The chain is ultra prunable as all dust and unspendable satoshi outputs are combined and released back into the mining pool. With millions of transactions per day you could be earning $500,000 for the whole chain as a lower bound number.

The reward is split 50% with the proof of work miners (This chain would be merge mined) and 50% goes to the nodes if a way of proof of resource can be developed.

If not proof of resource exists then obviously 100% of reward goes to the miners.

The important thing is the chain is fast, cheap but ultra prunable. If anyone wants to rest their bitcoin without having to worry about evaporation they can go back to the main chain (where the transactions are probably 10 - 100 more expensive by then)

We are paying to secure value, and we are not paying transaction fees relative to value.

A Billion dollar transaction is probably more space efficient than your average bitcoin user with hundreds of addresses with unspent outputs all over the place.

I am not a fan of any idea that derives the fee from value, because it's arbitrary and not anchored in the reality of the situation.

If you try to price gouge your users, they will leave. People accepted Bitcoin because of Satoshi's social contract and Bitcoin would not be used if fee based on value was a function.

I believe that side chains may offer a solution.

(Also, with the super fast side chain, addresses that have no more coin can be deleted after 6 months of no use too. I think.)

:p

[rpietila]

I am not a fan of any idea that derives the fee from value, because it's arbitrary and not anchored in the reality of the situation.

If you try to price gouge your users, they will leave. People accepted Bitcoin because of Satoshi's social contract and Bitcoin would not be used if fee based on value was a function.

I think a fee based on the value transferred is a natural thing. I envision that 0.01% should be low enough to cause no problems.

If you think people would leave Bitcoin if such a fee was implemented, why do you think they use PayPal or WU with their 4-10% fees?

Shocker: I myself use one bitcoin service that takes 0.90% as fees. It is just so handy for small transactions.

[SlipperySlope]

. . . Also dust in a single address evaporates completely after 6 months. The evaporation goes to the miners (plus the fee)

In the case of Bitcoin, what is considered dust today is result of the relatively high transaction fee required to prevent blockchain spam. I suppose that there is a possible world in which current dust becomes quite valuable as Bitcoin appreciates to prices that are inconceivable by most observers today.

Code:

224	TB disk drive cost $	
0.000000000224	$ per byte	
225	Bitcoin transaction bytes	
0.0000000504	$ per bitcoin transaction	
600	$ per bitcoin	
0.000006	$ per Satoshi	
119.047619	Bitcoin transactions stored per Satoshi	

I can imagine a possible world in which the blockchain is the primary ledger for machine-to-machine microtransactions - given inexpensive widely replicated storage.

[Cryddit]

We are paying to secure value, and we are not paying transaction fees relative to value.

A Billion dollar transaction is probably more space efficient than your average bitcoin user with hundreds of addresses with unspent outputs all over the place.

Well, yes but... so?  That's kind of my point.  It's more space efficient, but it still needs a billion dollars worth of security.  If you pay for the same space you use to secure a six-dollar SatoshiDice transaction, you won't get a billion dollars worth of security.  

I am not a fan of any idea that derives the fee from value, because it's arbitrary and not anchored in the reality of the situation.

On the contrary, basing the amount of security you're willing to pay for on anything other than the value you need to secure is what is not anchored in the reality of the situation.  It was an easy mistake to make in 1998 because Satoshi was not thinking about the concentrating effects of special-purpose security hardware.  Now that our security is 99%+ provided by such hardware, we have to structure our payment to provide for that, rather than providing for the incidental storage and bandwidth costs.  Storage and bandwidth are not where our security is coming from.

The choices are:

General inflation proportional to the amount of the money supply would impose the cost of security on all holders, regardless of how often or in what amount they make transactions.

Transaction fees proportional to the amount of the individual transactions would impose the cost of security on those actually making the most and the largest transactions.  

The "right answer" is probably some mix of the two.  But it certainly is not block subsidies tapering off to zero while transaction fees remain unrelated to the amount of security we need to purchase for them.

[ImI]

pretty dissapointing performance of the cryptonote-coins lately...

i would have expected them to do a lot better in the shadow of drk and the drk problems lately.

but no all of them are down monero, quazar, bytecoin, etc.....